Cartoon Network, LP v. CSC Holdings, Inc., 536 F.3d 121 (2nd Cir., 2008),[1] was a United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decision regarding copyright infringement in the context of DVR (digital video recorder) systems operated by cable television service providers.
It is notable for distinguishing the Ninth Circuit precedent MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc., regarding whether a momentary data stream is a "copy" per copyright law.
[2] In this case, Cablevision, a cable television provider, sought to implement a DVR service for its subscribers, allowing them to create copies of programs to be replayed at a later time.
Unlike traditional DVRs, which require a device containing a hard drive to be placed in the home of the subscriber, the Cablevision DVR stored content on servers at company facilities.
[4] Cablevision replied that the copies constituted de minimis use of the original programs because they only existed very briefly during the buffering process.
[1] Cablevision's copies were known to exist for as long as 1.2 seconds, but the circuit court did not establish this duration of time as a boundary between "transitory" and "non-transitory".
Per the precedent Religious Technology Center v. Netcom On-Line Communications Services, which established the requirement for "some element of volition or causation" in the creation of a copy,[6] the circuit court found that while Cablevision had some involvement in the process via managing the technology that enabled the copying, its involvement was not "sufficiently proximate" to constitute direct copyright infringement.
[1] Instead the practice of a single subscriber viewing a program at a later time was found to be time shifting, which is allowable per the Supreme Court precedent Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.[7] This ruling is considered to be an important precedent for the applicability of American copyright law toward modern practices of on-demand viewing of entertainment programs, and modern technologies that enable such consumer behavior by temporarily copying copyrighted digital files but not keeping or redistributing them.